Diana Palmer - Christmas On His Ranch

He wondered why she’d come back to haunt him. He’d almost pushed her to the back of his mind over the years. Almost. He’d gone to see her father finally to get news of her, because the loneliness he felt was eating into him like acid. He’d wondered, for one insane moment, if there was any chance that they might recapture the magic they’d had together when she was eighteen.

But she’d quickly disabused him of any such fancies. Her attitude was cold and hard and uncaring. She seemed to have frozen over in the years she’d been away.

How could he blame her? All of Antonia’s misfortunes could be laid at his door, because he was distrustful of people, because he’d jumped to conclusions, because he hadn’t believed in Antonia’s basic innocence and decency. One impulsive decision had cost him everything he held dear. He wondered sometimes how he could have been so stupid.

Like today when he’d let Maggie stampede him into attacking Antonia for something she hadn’t done. It was just like old times. Sally’s daughter was already a master manipulator, at age nine. And it seemed that he was just as impulsive and dim as he’d ever been. He hadn’t really changed at all. He was just richer.

Meanwhile, there was Antonia’s reappearance and her disturbing thinness and paleness. She looked unwell. He wondered absently if she’d had some bout with disease. Perhaps that was why she’d come home, and not because of her father at all. But, wouldn’t a warm climate be the prescription for most illnesses that caused problems? Surely no doctor sent her into northern Wyoming in winter.

He had no answers for those questions, and it would do him well to stop asking them, he thought irritably. It was getting him nowhere. The past was dead. He had to let it go, before it destroyed his life all over again.

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